Short stories

Wednesday, 24 February 2016

How Bev Met Carol - a universal experience...

I stretched up to the ceiling and came down slowly
into dog pose. It had been a while
since I’d viewed the world this way. As
the mat slipped beneath me and my calves cried out with an excess of lactic
acid, I was aware of a thumping in my head that had nothing to do with
Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’, which blasted from someone’s room below. Under the bookshelf I noted there was an
upturned, greying woodlouse and, more interestingly, what looked like a
ten-pence piece. I reached out and,
momentarily destabilised, fell in a heap of Max Wall leggings and Debbie Harry
dyed-blonde hair. I caught sight of my
feet, complete with sensational new footwear. It was a moment made perfect for
singing along with Stevie Nicks and admiring the cleanliness of my skirting
boards. My stomach muscles flexed in
time with the music and I wondered whether I would ever be the kind of girl to
pluck my eyebrows, wear chiffon or enjoy bananas on toast.

To my mild surprise, and before I had considered
rising from where I had fallen, the door to my private student abode opened and
Sue from next door, who had yet to learn the art of knocking and/or waiting,
laughed her special one-note exploding laugh and stepped inside.

“What on earth are you
doing?” she asked.
It crossed my mind whether
someone who wore home-knitted sweaters, flat shoes and no makeup had any right
to ask such a question.

She was right. “Clean out of fresh herbs today. I’ve got Heinz tomato soup, Heinz Big Soup
and Ambrosia rice pudding. Any use to
you?”

Sue had a mouth that froze
easily.

“No good?” I wiggled my eyebrows.

“Not really. I’m making curry.”
Sue was always making something.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s all right. See you later.”

“Probably will.” I smiled my sweetest smile.

It was lunchtime. I’d have to walk on to campus or open a
can. I’d gone for the fully-catered
option as I knew I would spend any available cash on clothes or books, and
could not be trusted to budget for essentials.
At least this way I wouldn’t starve.

With netball practice at two o’clock, I’d have time
to check out the boys in the union building, get a boring salad at the canteen,
and still be in time to meet the girls in the sports hall. All of this duly came to pass.

The sports hall echoed with
energetic voices and smelled of sweat and rubber.

“No kit?” Belinda bounced up and panted at me.

“Haven’t got round to buying
one.” And, I fear, I never shall.

Belinda laughed and slapped me on
the back before she passed the ball to Andrea and sprinted forward.

I was wearing a tennis dress and
good pants. My trainers were pink. Most of the others had on track-suit bottoms sensible tee shirts and boring footwear.

“What have you come as?” It was Carol. We’d met and taken tea and toast together in her room. Real butter on hot toast – Carol had talked
me through the importance of both. I
hadn’t worked her out. I liked her a
lot. I was woefully struck dumb by
her candid question. I had come as
myself, obviously.

Carol was blonde, like me, but
without the aid of chemicals. All that
would change, but for now, her hair was thick and curly, symmetrically styled
and smelled of flowers. Carol was
sporty, with proper thighs and square cut shoulders. She could run, jump and barge for England. She was wholesome.

We took our positions and the
whistle went. I prowled the edge of the
goal area, fending off my opponent, and took a vicious ball to the
midriff. The goal-attack swept it up (the
ball) and scored.

“Dozy bat,” said Carol.

I fumbled the next pass too, and
began to sweat. Then, catching a sly
bounce with unexpected alacrity, I took aim and shot from the edge of the
circle.

Jaws dropped at the swish of the
net.

“Stone the crows!” said Carol.

It was my only moment of glory
for the next forty minutes.

At the end of practice, I looked
for my muscular friend but she’d already left.
I was bereft.

Back at my hall, I knocked at
Jackie’s door, eager to prove to myself that I was a nice person, who deserved
to have friends.

“Oh, hi Bev. Do you want a coffee?”

“Tea, if you’ve got it.”

Jackie was a large girl. I listened to what could only be her thighs rubbing together as
she walked across the landing to the kitchen.
It reminded me of my younger self, when I had been an undeniably overweight schoolgirl. On her bookshelf there were volumes
on psychology, a tin of Quality Street, and a photo of two very hairy
dogs. Her desk was tidy. A man’s dressing gown hung on the back of
her door and a pair of Charentaise slippers protruded from underneath her bed,
which was made. I wondered whether I
could make a run for it.

“Hope you like Earl Grey.”

“Lovely.”

Jackie had thin, silky hair,
glasses that made her eye-lashes look like enormous spider legs, and a
perfectly formed cherubic mouth. When
she smiled, it was like a blessing. A
blessing I didn’t deserve.

“Are you working?” It was a little late to ask. And one of the dullest questions known to
Man.

“I’m just finishing an essay.”

Don’t ask what it’s about! “Oh, what’s it about?”

Jackie bathed me in joy and more
blessings. “It’s to do with The Stanford
Prison Experiment.”

“Well…the essay is entitled Analyse
the Impact of Situational Variables on Human Behaviour.” She paused, and took a moment to fix me with
a spidery stare.

I considered choking and/or
spilling my tea on her nylon rug.

Half an hour later, having
learned a great deal about power, dominance and how important it is to avoid
social experimentation, Jackie asked me whether I’d been bullied as a child. It was then that I realised I was the
prisoner and she the guard.

Jackie’s silence made my own
throat constrict. I would not be able
to answer. My body felt weak. Had the tea been drugged?

“Jackie?” And, thank the Lord and praise the angels,
Sue turned the handle and opened the door.

“Oh, hi. I just wondered whether either of you had a
colander?”

Jackie had, I hadn’t.

It was becoming obvious that I would not find my
university soulmate unless I went out and sought her out. Doing my best Trikonasana, taking as
much care as I could not to pass wind, all I could think about was Carol. There was something about her. Something that was so frank and real. Something stable. If only I could find out whether she had a sense of humour.

I sat at my desk and wrestled with an excerpt from
Beowulf. Losing focus, I stared out at
Sue trying to reverse her Skoda into the last remaining parking space. The Skoda had over a hundred wiper speeds
and a heating system fit for Siberia.
It was a most ugly-exotic vehicle.
Sue loved her Skoda. I watched her mount the kerb in a third attempt to
perform a parking coup, and found myself wondering at how easily I could be
distracted from my work. I forced
myself to concentrate. Three hours
passed. I knew not where they had gone,
nor where my mind had been. I had
finished my reading and my essay had written itself. In truth, I had dozed off and dribbled on a
battle scene. All that fighting and
slaying. And no jokes. I couldn’t wait to move on to Chaucer and his
bawdy tales.

Head down, I got on with my work, promising myself a
celebratory bowl of rice pudding and a dollop of strawberry jam when the final
full-stop had been placed.

Where did I leave the can opener?

Assignment completed. Pudding bowl scraped clean. It was time to go out. There was a band on in the union. It was cold outside but I was more used to
severe weather than most, having spent my formative years on a mountaintop on
the Welsh border. She was only a
flying instructor’s daughter but she certainly knew how to …

Walking along in the darkness
with the alien trees whispering desperate warnings of rapists and blood-thirsty
mythological beasts, it was easy to regret wearing a mini skirt and high-heeled
boots. I tried to finish my hilarious
ditty: how to…use her joystick; how to…soar the ridge; how to…set the trim. No, it wasn’t working. I laughed anyway, lost in a world of nerdy
glider-oriented humour.

Wait just a moment! Could it be
true? There was a figure up ahead, moving towards me. This focussed my attention nicely. I had a key in my pocket that could take out an eye, a ring on my
finger that could double as a knuckle duster and a ten-pound-note I could use
as bribery. Just then, a bicycle came
alongside and slowed at my side. I screamed.

“Hi gorgeous, it’s only me.”

“Shit! You scared me!”

“Want a ride in?” Ian was lanky,
unkempt and pronounced his vowels in a way I’d never heard before, but he was
friendly and knew how to maintain his bike.

“Sit here and I’ll go in front.”

With Ian’s buttocks in my face
and my legs akimbo, I dangled, gripping my rescuer around the waist, and felt
the full punctuation of a saddle made specially for men. It was a short ride, so I kept quiet until
we got to campus, mapping the potholes with my coccyx. The doors to the union building stood open
and I could hear tuning up coming from the first floor.

“Thanks. Are you coming in?” I dismounted àla Olga Corbett and took a bow.

Ian grinned then looked as though
a thought was taking him over. “Maybe later.
Got a game going on.”

I nodded.

“Poker.”

“Right.”

“Five of us.”

There was nothing more to
say. First year boys had a lot to
learn.

After a quick visit to the
Ladies, I checked my pigeonhole and found the usual university propaganda,
rolled up and likely to stay that way until found by one of the campus’
pyromaniacs.
I slipped off my treasured
shag-pile jacket and went up to the bar.

“Hi Bren. Working tonight?” Bren was a mature student, and skint.

“Needs must.”

“Can I leave this?”

“Sure.”

I handed her my jacket.

“What can I get you?”

“Special Brew with blackcurrant,
please.”

“Right.”

I joined a group of people I knew
and found out that a boy in my English tutorial group had been kicked out of
his digs by a maniacal girlfriend with an elaborate imagination and a concise
vocabulary. Apparently, she threw his
snipped up belongings onto the street from their first floor apartment because
he was ‘too much of a twat’.

“You don’t mean Sean?” I was vaguely interested, I’ll admit.

“Yep.”

“He the one who likes to read up
on phallic symbols in Virginia Wolf?”
This from Erudite Elise.

The conversation was circular,
based on hearsay, and ultimately unrewarding.
My friends were birdbrains, picking at tid-bits. I was a birdbrain too, but of a different
variety, with less straightforward appetites.
I was looking for beauty, literary truth and the kind of exotic romance
only Brian Ferry would understand. I
took a gulp from my purple drink and raised myself to my full height.

“I’m going to have a look at the
band,” I said. “Anyone coming?”

No one was.

Past the notice boards and a
couple of shabby postgrads with beards and frightened eyes, I pushed open the
doors to the main hall, which was in darkness, apart from where five swaggering
young men were about to start up a new song.
I knew immediately which one I would be dancing for when the time
came. Long blond hair, tall and skinny
with a great voice.

When Carol came and stood beside
me, I barely noticed until she spoke:

“Want some cider, you lovely
tart?”

Carol was dressed in a
full-length kaftan and had a pink flower behind her left ear.

“Sweet or dry?” I asked.
Please be my friend!

“Dry, of course.”

“Then top me up!” I sound like
my dad!

It turns out that Special Brew
and blackcurrant with a Bulmer’s top is a mix only the more discerning amongst
us would appreciate. Carol was
obviously impressed by my adventurous nature.

“Can’t ruin a drink you’ve
already ruined,” she observed.

The music was loud. Several fanatics took to the dance
floor. After a few minutes Carol joined
them, eyes closed, with the smuggest smile I’d ever seen playing mind tricks in
the flashing lights. I siddled up. It always took me a moment to get over
myself when I ventured onto the dance floor.
I was a Sister Sledge kind of girl, or a Police fantasiser. Heavy rock required a degree of grunge I had
not thought to bring with me on this particular evening. Smoke rose from the front of the stage,
caught in my throat, and before I knew it I was struggling to breathe.

“Where’s your inhaler, you
absolute cretin?”

I pointed and mouthed, “Bar. Bren.”

Carol was back within seconds and
I was saved. Carol, my guardian angel.

“More cider?”

The music drummed in my bones,
the Salbutamol bathed my constricted alveoli and I knew I’d found someone I
could be myself with.

Confirmation, if confirmation were needed, came in
many forms that first term. I was a
literary addict with little use for critical commentary by people who knew
better than I did the subtexts of Shakespeare and Racine. Bold and blonde, my raw, young mind absorbed
exquisite lines from Wordsworth’s ‘The Prelude’ and scoffed at Virginia Wolfe’s
promised visit in ‘To the Lighthouse’.
I lived in a wonderland of imagery, and dreamed of beautiful boys with
long noses and pretty hair. I liked
fluffy jackets, tight tee shirts and stretch jeans, worn with platform
boots. Carol understood maths,
budgeting and men with potential. Her
fashion choices were experimental. She planned for the future. I planned for the next few minutes. Carol talked about a career in the city or
going into farming with Dave, her long-suffering boyfriend. I wondered which shorts I should wear with my
rucksack on a trip around Europe. But
we both loved rice pudding with red jam, Sting, dry cider, and staying up late
to put the universe to rights, generally spiralling into random hilarity and drunkeness.

Carol would get a good degree and I would not. She would work hard and make copious notes
during lectures. I would read mountains
of books and dominate tutorials, fluctuating between brilliance and crass,
outspoken stupidity, harbouring a stubborn inability to take advice. We were as alike as marshmallow and pickled
onions, but our friendship was unassailable and infinitely fascinating. Life without Carol would have been
unthinkable, not to mention as dull as Margaret Thatcher’s knicker drawer (I
presume).

There are three adventures in the Bev and Carol series (available in ebook and paperback):

About Bev

My name is Bev and I live in SW France in a crumbly old house with a husband who’s keen on renovation, two kids who are going through the French education system (arrrgh), no dogs and no cats.
Bunny on a Bike is not my first book, but it is the first book to be put out into the world. Writing Bunny on a Bike was something I enjoyed doing, (my son is currently asking me whether I like bagels – distracting, in a random kind of way), because it was nice to remember all the ridiculous adventures I had in London and try to recall what it felt like to be young and ready to try anything.
I hope that people who read it will laugh a lot and feel uplifted. That would be wonderful. You can have a look on Amazon Kindle if you would like to.
If you want to get more of an idea of the tone of the book then I suggest you have a look at some of the posts on this blog.
I have since published two mysteries and a prequel to Bunny on a Bike. I will publish my next book (suspense) next week (Oct 2013). All are listed on my blog.
Thanks for visiting my page and I hope you find something you like.